Associated Press. A Flower for the President, 1953Churchill visited Washington early in 1953, shortly before the end of Harry S Truman's presidency. Here he is shown pinning a flower onto Truman's lapel before a dinner at the British Embassy in Washington. After dinner Churchill discussed one of the most pressing questions of the day—the problem of safely rearming Germany, within the context of NATO and European military integration, as a bulwark against a possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Churchill referred to the proposed multilateral force of the European Defense Community as a "sludgy amalgam," which he thought would be less effective than a coalition of national armies.